Merrill v. People First of Alabama
The Court paused a federal injunction that would have let Alabama counties offer curbside voting, leaving the State's ban in force through the November 2020 election.
The order does not decide whether the ban violates federal disability law — it only freezes the situation while Alabama's appeal works through the lower courts.
How it got here: A federal district court issued a permanent injunction against Alabama's curbside-voting ban; the Eleventh Circuit left it in place; Alabama's secretary of state applied to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Several Alabama voters with serious disabilities — including people with asthma, Parkinson's disease, and other chronic conditions — sued the Alabama secretary of state over a statewide ban on curbside voting. They argued that being forced to wait inside crowded polling places during the COVID-19 pandemic put them at disproportionate risk of death, and that the ban denied them equal access to in-person voting in violation of federal disability law. Some Alabama counties were willing to offer curbside voting but were blocked by the state ban.
The question before the Court
Could Alabama keep its statewide ban on curbside voting in place just before the November 2020 election, despite a federal court ruling that the ban violated the rights of disabled voters during the COVID-19 pandemic?
The Court's answer
Yes — the Court put the district court's injunction on hold, keeping Alabama's ban on curbside voting in place through the November 2020 election. The majority issued no written explanation, so the legal reasoning behind the stay is not stated in the order itself. The practical effect was that counties prepared to let disabled voters cast ballots from their cars could not do so while Alabama's appeal worked through the Eleventh Circuit.
The stay was explicitly conditioned: it would lift automatically if Alabama's eventual petition for Supreme Court review was denied, and would terminate once the Court issued a final judgment if review was granted. The order left the underlying question of whether the ban violates federal disability law entirely open.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Alabama voters with serious health conditions who faced heightened COVID-19 risk were required to go inside crowded polling places to vote in person. Counties that were ready and willing to let disabled voters cast ballots from their cars — a curbside option already allowed in 28 other states — were blocked from doing so while the stay was in effect.
What changes now
Alabama's ban on curbside voting remained in effect through the November 2020 election. The underlying case continued in the Eleventh Circuit. Under the terms of the stay order, if Alabama ultimately sought Supreme Court review and was denied, the stay would terminate automatically. The order left the core ADA question — whether the curbside-voting ban unlawfully discriminates against disabled voters — unresolved for the lower courts to decide.
What this does not decide
The order does not decide whether Alabama's ban on curbside voting violates the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Constitution. It only pauses the lower court's injunction while the appeal proceeds, and it says nothing about curbside voting policies in any other state.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor argued the stay should have been denied because Alabama showed no legal error in the district court's careful, trial-record findings. She reasoned that absentee voting is not a meaningful substitute for in-person voting under the ADA, since in-person voters face far fewer procedural obstacles. She emphasized that the district court's injunction was modest — it allowed, but did not require, willing counties to offer curbside voting — and that this Court should not override a record-based factual judgment with its own intuitions about pandemic risks.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the standard four-factor test used for emergency stays — weighing how likely Alabama was to win its appeal, whether Alabama would suffer irreparable harm without a pause, whether voters would be harmed by the pause, and where the public interest lay. The majority issued no written opinion explaining how it weighed those factors.
- The Court's one-paragraph order paused only the district court's injunction pending the Eleventh Circuit's review and, if sought, a future Supreme Court petition — a standard, conditional stay rather than a ruling on the underlying legal merits.
- Three justices dissented, arguing Alabama had not shown any legal error in the district court's detailed, trial-record-based findings, and that the standard for granting a stay had not been met. The dissent reasoned that the injunction was a modest, narrowly tailored remedy — it did not require curbside voting statewide but merely permitted willing counties to offer it.
- The dissent also argued that under the Americans with Disabilities Act (federal law requiring equal access for people with disabilities), absentee voting is not an adequate substitute for in-person voting, because in-person voters receive different assistance and face far fewer procedural hurdles than absentee voters, meaning disabled voters are legally entitled to equal access to both options.